The Berlin electropolitician Dr. Hermann BECKMANN wrote in ETZ on November 22, 1923 in issue 47/48, page 1031ff the article

.

„The first electric light bulb.

Contribution to the history of electrical engineering.

By Dr. H. Beckmann, Berlin-Zehlendorf

.

Overview. Twenty years before Edison filed his patent for incandescent lamps in 1879, a German who emigrated to the United States had already produced and publicly exhibited carbon filament incandescent lamps; this has been extensively reported in a major patent lawsuit conducted in the United States in 1893″.

.

Even this first sentence from Beckmann is inaccurate. Beckmann calls a trial, but he distorts the court’s findings. Otherwise Beckmann does not mention any sources or evidence for such Goebel lamps at all, even if he wanted to refer to the three alleged Goebel lamps known from the photo, which only came to light in 1881 or 1893 – were thus submitted as deficiency beings.

.

„Although many researchers recognized early on that metallic wires glowed brightly when electric current flowed through them, they also had to observe that the wire melted. Not even platinum, as Groves proposed in 1840, or iridium, which Staite proposed in 1848, was able to resist. Better already held a thin coal rod, which made Starr 1) in America in 1845 to the glow. For the preparation of an actual incandescent lamp, however, all such and similar experiments had only preparatorysignificance, were to a certain extent only scientific observations that could not provide actual models for the lamp with a glowing filament, as it took shape in later decades. …“

.

BECKMANN begins by mentioning the important lamp developers, which Goebel was by no means ahead of them. They are all those on which EDISON undoubtedly also built. Beckmann’s criterion, more than preparatory significance, but no actual role models for the lamp – that was the outermost thing Göbel’s subsequent self-examination invoked.

.

„If we ask manuals and trusses about the actual inventor of the incandescent lamp, the general answer will probably be that it was Edison who in 1879 obtained the first patent for a lamp, with a bamboo fibre glowing in a vacuum, who was the first to equip the steamer „Columbia“ with a system of 115 light bulbs in April 1880 and whose lamps were the highlight of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1881. but Edison was not the first to produce a practically usable incandescent lamp; rather, more than 20 years earlier, another inventor had already built a carbon filament lamp in which, just as later with the Edison lamp, a charred bamboo fibre also glowed in a vacuum, a lamp which was not actually in any way inferior to the actual Edison lamp, not even in terms of its technical design. The lamp was also built in America, but by a man of German descent, and the name of this inventor deserves to be brought back to light in the history of technology alongside the Edison. However, not much was missing, so this man’s name and work would have been lost forever, and it was only strange circumstances that made him known in America shortly before the death of the inventor, about which a preliminary, relatively short report can be found in the „ETC“ from 1893. But I owe the first reference to this man to the calendar of German technique by Feldhaus and his history sheets for technique (1915), while further documents had to be taken from American technical journals from 1893 in order to get a clear picture of him.2)“.

Beckmann shows that he definitely had no idea about the Edison lamp from 1879. His presentation lacks the technical knowledge and information on the Edison patent.

Beckmann claims that Henry Goebel made and presented designated lamps. That is not the case. But what Goebel had shown in court to prove his priority did not meet the technical requirements at all. Goebel not only had NOTHING, no, what he subsequently had the lawyers show him was not enough at all. But Beckmann also lacked the technical insights into the problems of Edison’s lamp development in 1879.

Beckmann’s reference to Electrical Engineer and thus to Franklin Leonard Pope of January 25, 1893, is sufficient that his entire support crumbles into pure fairy tale studies, which can already be found at Pope and Vanderweyde, some details, such as Mönighausen as Münchhausen in Göbel’s first affidavit of January 21, 1893, which had long since been off the table in 1923. And Beckmann’s reference to Feldhaus is so far a cheek, because Beckmann ignores Ahrens, but takes over mistakes from Ahrens.

.

„In 1879 Edison had received the first American patent No. 223,898 for the electric light bulb, covering everything that could be brought under the term of a carbon filament lamp. He and his legal successor, General Electric Co, had worked under this patent for quite a number of years when, shortly before the patent expired on 27 XI 1894, the company began to sue other companies that also produced light bulbs in America and to prohibit them from making lamps under the Edison patent. This was followed by a whole chain of lawsuits, in which the legal proceedingswent on step by step, one after the other, and each time ended with the sued company being banned from manufacturing electric light bulbs. …“

Beckmann’s description is wrong in that Edison’s great patent case, which began in 1885, received the judgment of Judge Walace only in the summer of 1891, after which Edison’s appeal by the defendant was confirmed by Lacombe/Shipman only in 1892. Only then could Edison have applications for injunctive relief titled.

.

„In the series of these lawsuits, the Beacon Vacuum Pump and Electrical Company, Boston, was also sued by General Electric Co. for patent infringement at the beginning of 1893, and it was believed that the usual course of events could be foreseen here as well. To everyone’s amazement, however, things this time took a completely different course. Right at the beginning of the trial it became apparent that, in contrast to the works condemned until then, the sued company asked for a short delay in order to be able to process material. But something completely unexpected arose when she submitted her documents: because the defendant company informed the court that a man had been producing incandescent lamps and carbon filaments at her and for her for a long time, who produced good electric light bulbs according to his own process already 20 years before Edison applied for his patent, made them…“

.

Beckmann does not have a reference to a source that supports his assertion, because that is awesome:

.

Beacon in Boston defended herself by claiming that Göbel had worked and built lamps in Boston for 20 years (that would be 1893 recalculated since 1873 – not bad). Only that Göbel himself did not even notice a word about ever having worked for Beacon in seven affidavits of spring 1893. It would have been hard to get along with his employment contract with American Electric Light Co., which ran from 5 September 1881.

.

„in the streets of New York. But the trial, which was now relaxed and fought through in three instances, took on a huge scale, even if it went off quickly; several hundred witnesses and experts, as seldom before in a dispute over technical property, were called in to fight down the Edison patent on the one hand, and to protect the oppressed monopoly of General Electric Co. on the other. …“

.

.

Beckmann joins Pope in Echo on VanderWeyde – but their tales were soon officially revoked by the electrically lit Telescope-man under oath from VanderWeyde, who accuses the lawyers of Witter & Kenyon of deliberately falsifying his affidavit. Beckmann himself was not in New York in 1882. Beckmann has only taken up the rumours that VanderWeyde and Pope had briefly put into the world (his reference in footnote 2) shows it. But in November 1923 Beckmann was just as enthusiastically Germanistic in the Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift (ETZ):

.

„The man around whose almost forgotten work this great trial was then conducted through three instances was Heinrich Göbel (Fig. 1). …“

.

The documented historical findings show that Beckmann did not know what and how, with whom, Edison and the patent infringers fought in court. In short, it wasn’t a three-way fight. Goebel was not a party, but a witness to Edison’s defendants.

There were three completely independent disputes, from applications for injunctive relief, against three completely different lamp manufacturers, Beacon Co. in Massachusetts, Columbia Co. in Missouri and The United States Electric Lighting Company in Oconto/Wisconsin and Milwaukee, respectively.

.

„As he himself reported during the process, he was born on 20 IV of 1818 in Springe near Hanover, where his father ran a chocolate shop…“

.

Here it was presumably about the pedlar activities of the father, who went as a temporary gardener over country, from place to place, between Hameln and Hanover, to make garden work and sold besides self-made chocolate.

.

„… After finishing school in Springe, the son first worked in his father’s business, but without finding satisfaction in the long run;… „

.

Heinrich Göbel was 14 years old, after his confirmation, unemployed and without apprenticeship, lived at home and had to help his father.

.

„Rather, he was always strongly attracted to dealing with scientific things and making all kinds of mechanical apparatus. After a short time as a pharmacist apprentice, he became a watchmaker and optician and then practised this profession on his own account in Springe. …“

.

There are no documents for these activities and skills. Pharmacists, watchmakers and opticians – these are technical terms. Heinrich Göbel can only have had random experiences in Springe in the 1830s. After his apprenticeship with a locksmith, which began in 1834, Göbel must have moved across the country as a peddler, like his father, and carried out watch trade and watch repairs. There is hardly any manufacturer of watches to be understood by watchmaker.

.

„As a result of his work, he often had the opportunity to refurbish apparatus for the technical college;…“

.

A 30km trip on foot to Hanover or a ride on a wooden cart? probably means the University of Hannover. There are no historical documents and no evidence of this.

.

„awakening in him a great fondness for physics. His interest in scientific experiments was supported and promoted by a „Professor“ Mönighausen, who worked as a private teacher in the neighbourhood. Göbel made numerous physical apparatuses for him and had a lot of opportunity to talk to him in his workshop about technical things and to learn about questions that fascinated him. …“

.

You won’t find the name Mönighausen in any name register. The interpretation as „Münchhausen“, as Göbel stated in his affidavit of January 21, 1893, also remains in vagueness. Because such a Münchhausen did not exist in the Springer area, nor at the Hanover Technical Center. Apparatuses or barometers from Göbel’s hand were and are not known in Springe. Göbel had no workshop of his own and no tools and throughout his life he had no scientific knowledge beyond what a curious person could learn from nature in the course of his working life, e.g. cooking chocolate or mercury.

.

As he himself reported during the process, he was born on 20 IV of 1818 in Springe near Hanover, where his father ran a chocolate shop…“

.

Here it was presumably about the pedlar activities of the father, who went as a temporary gardener over country, from place to place, between Hameln and Hanover, to make garden work and sold besides self-made chocolate.

.

„… After finishing school in Springe, the son first worked in his father’s business, but without finding satisfaction in the long run;… „

.

Heinrich Göbel was 14 years old, after his confirmation, unemployed and without apprenticeship, lived at home and had to help his father.

.

„Rather, he was always strongly attracted to dealing with scientific things and making all kinds of mechanical apparatus. After a short time as a pharmacist apprentice, he became a watchmaker and optician and then practised this profession on his own account in Springe.“

.

There are no documents for these activities and skills. Pharmacists, watchmakers and opticians – these are technical terms. Heinrich Göbel can only have had random experiences in Springe in the 1830s. After his apprenticeship with a locksmith, which began in 1834, Göbel must have moved across the country as a peddler, like his father, and carried out watch trade and watch repairs. There is hardly any manufacturer of watches to be understood by watchmaker.

.

„As a result of his work, he often had the opportunity to refurbish apparatus for the technical college;…“

.

A 30km trip on foot to Hanover or a ride on a wooden cart? – possible. Probably means the University of Hannover. There are no historical documents and no evidence of this.

.

„awakening in him a great fondness for physics. His interest in scientific experiments was supported and promoted by a „Professor“ Mönighausen, who worked as a private teacher in the neighbourhood. Göbel made numerous physical apparatuses for him and had a lot of opportunity to talk to him in his workshop about technical things and to learn about questions that fascinated him. …“

.

You won’t find the name Mönighausen in any name register. The interpretation as „Münchhausen“, as Göbel stated in his affidavit of January 21, 1893, also remains in vagueness. Because such a Münchhausen did not exist in the Springer area, nor at the Hanover Technical Center. Apparatuses or barometers from Göbel’s hand were and are not known in Springe. Göbel had no workshop of his own and no tools and throughout his life he had no scientific knowledge beyond what a curious person could learn from nature in the course of his working life, e.g. cooking chocolate or mercury.

.

„Mönighausen also instructed him, among other things, to produce good mercury barometers and, above all, pointed out to him several times the promising possibility of having an electric lamp operate in an air-diluted room. It was this suggestion in particular that led Göbel many years later on the right path to build a usable light bulb. But he also learned at Mönighausen to manufacture good galvanic batteries, electromagnetic apparatus and machines. …“

.

Beckmann takes off with it: Mercury barometer, Torricelli discharge method, vacuum bulb, battery production. Experts have described the first batteries of the 1940s. These assertions of Beckmann in 1923, which may lead over Feldhaus, Ahrens, Pope and Vanderweyde to Heinrich Göbel’s Münchhausen, before 1848, do not take into account that it was not possible in the 1840s to think or even build a battery in Springe that could have operated an electric vacuum bulb. The courts also had this question exposed to the „Goebel-Defense“ in an expert opinion: At that time, there were no raw materials for batteries that could have produced a steady stream of irregular glowers.

.

„At first Göbel used the technical knowledge he had acquired in this way by making optical devices, barometers and watches in his home town of Springe, for which he always found good sales on the Hanover market. ….“

.

It is not proven that Heinrich Göbel ever would have been in Hanover. No one has ever seen a goebel movement of the above claim – there is no photograph of a goebel clock or a goebel barometer.

.

„But finally, in 1848, at the age of 30, he decided to seek his fortune in the United States of North America, and after a very arduous journey that took more than three months on a sailor, finally landed with his wife and two children in New York, where he set up a small shop in the poorest area of Monroe Street, which he ran there for 20 years…“.

.

The sea voyage 1848-1849 as well as emigration and immigration took place, lasted less than three months, and is exactly documented. Also the first office in Monroe Street, Lower Eastside, Manhattan of New York.

.

„Three or four years after his arrival in the United States, Henry Goebel, as he now wrote himself, then returned to the suggestions Mönighausen had given him and initially built a large zinc carbon battery consisting of 80 cells with which he operated an electric arc lamp made with the help of two pieces of coal on the roof of his house (Fig. 2). However, this first experiment was an unwanted success for him; he was arrested as the author of this phenomenon of light, which was regarded as a source of fire, and brought before the justice of the peace….“

.

Various people to whom Göbel had told this story have told it to others. Over 40 years after 1850, in 1893, eyewitnesses of the „Goebel Defense“ remembered the arc light. Was it outside the house? On the roof? Was it an arclight? A police or court or press report does not exist.

.

„Perhaps this unpleasant result then caused Göbel to give up his attempts with the arc lamp; at least from then on he turned again to the attempt to produce an electric light bulb according to the earlier suggestions of his teacher Mönighausen. However, during the many rehearsals that he was now working on, he did a happy touch by finding that a piece of bamboo wood that was once charred in the ferrule of his walking stick was a good conductor for the electric current, and that it was easily possible to represent for the electric current, and that it was easily possible to split off a thin fiber from the piece, which could be brought to light embers when the electric current flowed through it. But this observation led him to let such a charred bamboo fibre glow in a vacuum, which he was able to produce easily with the help of a barometer, whereby the thread, if it was very thin and very evenly split off, had a quite good life span…“.

.

The above is swell-free Beckmann prose based on the unproven self-examination of Göbel, about Vanderweyde, Pope, Ahrens, Feldhaus –

and in relation to Münchhausen. None of this is proven.

.

„In fact, in 1854 Göbel had already found all the foundations for a usable carbon filament lamp, as Edison did 25 years later…“

.

Henry Goebel claimed this in 1893 – almost 14 years after Edison’s decisive breakthrough of 1879.

„If we look more closely at the lamps (Figs. 3, 4 and 5), we must notice the extraordinarily skilful form that Göbel already chose at that time, and which we still know today from much later lamp constructions. …“

.

No one has ever been able to look at the lamps described. because they did not exist. Only in 1893, when photography was brought before the judge in the „Goebel-Defense“, lamps were also examined. The result: the glass work of these specimens 1, 2 and 3 was recent and – the technique of the lamps was completely irrelevant, by no means at the level of the problems of the Edison solution of 1879.

The beauty of form of the squeezed, irregular tube yard ware may remain in the eyes of women.

.

„To produce the outer shells of his light bulbs, Göbel first used vessels made from eau de cologne bottles; later he used a wide glass tube, which he shaped by blowing. The wires through which electricity was supplied to the bamboo thread soon consisted of copper, soon of iron, but also of platinum, for which it was well known to Göbel that it was particularly suitable for melting down in glass because its coefficient of expansion was quite similar to that of glass; however, due to the high price, he successfully tried to replace platinum with iron. The carbon thread was then attached to the feed wire with a special putty, which usually consisted of furnace black. Incidentally, in order to achieve good electrical connection, Göbel repeatedly copper-plated the contact points of his lamps galvanically using a process which he already knew how to use well at that time.

.

He used the lamps that Göbel produced in this way to light his shop window in Monroe Street, so that later in the course of the process many people found themselves remembering having seen incandescent lamps in the factory. He also attached such a lamp to his wall clock, which he lit up hourly with the help of a contact. However, Göbel’s lamps became public knowledge mainly due to a different circumstance. Based on the knowledge that Göbel brought back from Germany, he built himself a large telescope with an opening of 300 mm and a length of 4.5 to 6 metres. This telescope (Fig. 6), mounted on a small four-wheeled carriage, was displayed in the streets of New York in the evening for a view of the starry sky. The electricity for these lamps was supplied by 60 elements, which had also found their place on the car in two large wooden boxes. As long as the battery was fresh, he could let two or three lamps light up at the same time for a short time, while some years continued in the streets of New York, had probably survived for a long time;…“

.

It is impossible to make such an incandescent lamp out of eau de cologne bottles that could take priority over Edison’s high-tech facial expressions. Neither the glass work nor the evacuation and the heat resistance cannot be achieved, provided someone knew the technical details. Until the end of his life, Göbel did not know what problems Edison had solved.

Such batteries made of acid bath and lead/zinc were very dangerous and of considerable weight – as said before 1860, this is incredible for an open bumpy pony car. (Here too, expert opinions are available in 1893).

.

„for as late as 1881, a company that intended to produce incandescent lamps but hadn’t quite finished it had heard of Göbel and turned to him for help. The company’s representative was surprised to see him as a man familiar with the entire production of carbon filament lamps and even a whole number of such finished lamps together with a complete mercury pump and all other equipment necessary for the production of incandescent lamps. For a while Göbel produced carbon filament lamps for the company concerned, which were excellent for those times; …“

.

It is historically proven that the furniture sons Henry and Adolph, like their father, traded in their father’s shop as „watchmakers“. American Electric Light Co., newly founded in 1881, was looking for someone who could make the terminals in the lamps so that the wire connections would be inexpensive and durable. Thus the son Adolph Otto Göbel came to his employment contract. Half a year later Henry Senior also signed such a contract, on probation – and failed.

.

„However, the company got into financial difficulties and soon had to cease its activities. …“

.

End of the American Electric Light Company as a lamp manufacturer was the end of 1882, they moved and continued differently.

.

„At first it is remarkable that Göbel did not take further advantage of his invention, and above all did not try to apply for a patent; later in the process Göbel justified this with the fact that he always lived in rather simple, probably somewhat depressed circumstances, only poorly understood English, had not learned to read it at all and hardly cared about things that did not concern his small business….“.

.

Nothing of Henry Göbel’s knowledge and ability met the basic requirement of the usability of his more exclusive capabilities. It was a group of amateur assets which, where it belonged, not only could not add anything, but did not fulfil the quality of the work to be reproduced. Socio-culturally, it was marked by considerable individual dynamism and ruthlessness. Goebel could stage or, if it was stuck, go headless.

.

„His light bulb, which was fed by primary elements, could not have gained any technical significance, and the whole Göbel invention would not suddenly have been drawn back to it by the already mentioned great process. The first original lamps could still be presented at these trial negotiations, but they were all no longer operational, which is understandable in view of the fact that the time of their production was almost 40 years ago when they were presented. One of the lamps had a jump, so that it no longer had a vacuum, and with the other lamps the threads were torn over the decades, while a good vacuum could still be detected,

.

However, all the lamps that could still be found at that time were carefully examined in all directions in the course of the process. In particular, physicist Pope, who was a frequent expert in the United States at the time, studied these lamps in great detail. He, like Professor Cross, was initially quite hostile to Göbel’s assertions; however, in the course of their investigations, both experts came to the opposite opinion; Pope initially considered it impossible, especially in view of the state of the art in the early 1950s, that Göbel would have been able to produce such lamps at all, and Professor E. Tompson as well. Tompson raised similar objections. It was claimed, for example, that Göbel had not yet had the technical means to produce a vacuum as strong as necessary for a sufficient service life and as the lamps still had to some extent….“

.

We are simply talking about reports from 1893 which cannot prove retroactively facts or events of 1854, 1859 or 1879.

.

„But Göbel proved that it had undoubtedly already been possible for him in a very simple way to pump out the lamps by evacuating them like barometer tubes, which he was familiar with. He thus completely filled a wide glass tube of considerable length, at the upper closed end of which the carbon filament was melted, with mercury and then tilted it over, so that it stood upright like a barometer tube, the mercury thus adjusted to the height of 760 mm; in this simple way he received a sufficient vacuum when the mercury column sank in the upper part of the pipe; according to his statement he also owed this method to the instructions of Mönighausen. …“

.

Göbel did not prove that he could make lamps at all. He claimed it in 1893, while the experts made completely unempirical assumptions without dating.

.

„When this design for the manufacture of the vacuum was finished, Pope raised the new objection that freshly copper-plated joints, as they existed on the wires of the lamp, if they had come into contact with mercury even for a very short time as described above, would have had to amalgamate, but that no trace of mercury could have been detected on the copper deposit. For his part, however, Göbel pointed out again that in his work he had always used only chemically pure mercury, which he had previously heated and distilled several times, and furthermore, the evacuation only had to be carried out in dry weather, not in humid air; if this were observed, no amalgamation of the mercury with the copper would occur. When Pope made a whole series of experiments taking this angle into account, he did indeed find that Göbel’s assertion was also true in this case. The mercury treated in this way did not actually stick to the copper; it was not possible for Pope to detect even traces of it on the precipitate. By the way, Göbel later gave up this evacuation procedure and used a special vacuum pump instead…“

.

Several experts in 1893, e.g. Ludwig Böhm, refuted the amalgam physics of Goebel and Pope – „the descriptions could not be observed on the example exits either. Göbel’s pump improvement was useless and was not used by Göbel himself. Göbel merely pretended to have his own patent in the new mix of lamps. Beckmann does not write about Göbel’s pump improvement patent.

.

„The other expert, Professor Cross, who was initially also hostile, but then, like Pope, became a strong defender of Göbel, dealt very thoroughly with the design and thickness of the threads. Edison had claimed protection for the fact that he was the first to use carbon in thread form, instead of in the form of a thin rod as has been the case ever since. Cross and Pope found out now that also in this respect the Göbel lamp did not lag behind that of Edison, since the threads that Göbel used had a thickness of 0.2 to 0.28 mm, while with other lamps, which were available at that time, the thread thickness was between 0,38 and 0.127 mm, whereas the thickness of the carbon rods formerly used by Sawyer and Mann varied between 1.5 and 0.75 mm, so that Göbel’s bamboo fibre had to be called „carbon threads“, as it was called in the Edison patent. …“

.

All the theoretical impressions of Cross, Tompson and Pope with regard to possible interpretations are completely speculative, because in 1893 they argued with concrete lamps that did not have the popular characteristics in 1893 – but which did not even exist before 1879.

.

„Even Professor E. Tompson had a number of objections in the sense that a lamp, as the inventor said he had made it, was not feasible; For three of his first lamps still in existence, Göbel had used thin copper or iron wires instead of platinum, which he used in other lamps to melt into the glass, and Tompson considered it impossible to maintain a good vacuum in the lamps when using iron wires and to achieve sufficient burning time with such lamps…“

.

Beckmann apparently had seen the illustration of Ex. 1, 2 and 3, or he refers to them as „technically unsuitable“ – after all.

.

„Because of these and similar concerns, Göbel was finally ordered by the court to manufacture a number of lamps under the supervision of all the technical sizes that had been brought up in the process, exactly as he had previously described; likewise, exactly according to Göbel’s instructions, lamps were also manufactured by another court expert and in particular also those in which the wire was passed through the glass with the help of thin iron wires. However, Göbel succeeded without difficulty in producing lamps exactly as described, i.e. using the evacuation methods described by him and also despite Tompson’s objection, using thin iron wires, which were then subjected to permanent problems and resulted in an average burning time of 190 to 245 hours. All these very thorough tests showed clearly how void the various interjections that were made were and what significant experience, skill and safety Göbel had in the production of the threads, in cleaning the mercury and all other work connected with the manufacture of his lamps, which was also particularly noted by the court when the verdict was pronounced….“

.

First, Henry Göbel’s appearance in Boston, who lived in New York, means that he will have made such a service trip as a witness, only in exchange for money for the rail journey and the court’s accommodation. Accordingly, the reviewers Pope, Cross and Tompson, will also have been paid.

Everything that Beckmann puts into the experts‘ mouths here is a free retrospective squadrony, without empirical significance.

With the best will in the world, the three ex. 1, 2 and 3 do not reveal any statements about Göbel’s dexterity. Rather, as Edison noted, it seems inconceivable that someone who is said to have made such a glass factory as the lamps 1, 2 and 3 could hardly have made an extensive successful production of barometers in Springe before 1848.

.

„Professor Cross and Dr. Morton expressly confirmed that after their experiments it would very well be possible to produce a lamp with the vacuum, as Göbel used to produce it, which had practically good usability and sufficient service life; yes, even one of the opposing experts, Clark, of the Edison Society, had to admit that the Göbel method of evacuating the lamps was much better than those used at the time when Edison applied for his patent, i.e. 25 years later….“

.

The glassblowers who had worked with Göbel in his shop for the American Electric Light Company in 1881 deny Göbel’s real inability to evacuate and strip a glass work in such a way that something useful would have emerged. Göbel only had to produce wire clamps and carry out experiments for annealing elements – also unsuccessfully. He cut fibres from the reed with a knife free by hand; only when he got a device for it from the manufactory, as it was used at Edison, Göbel was able to split off halfway dimensionally accurate fibres.

The Tuben-Ex 1, 2, 3, allegedly made by Henry Goebel Jr. himself in 1893, or similar tube lamps, have produced glass workers for Goebel free of charge in their spare time or helped him evacuate numerous affidavits – court documents Beckmann did not know. Göbel promised them good work and payment for it, if the Göbel lamp factory would run with it for the time being.

As already mentioned, in 1893 the experts were added to the list of Göbel’s priority lamps, which did not exist and were supposedly very old – 25 years before Edison.

.

„Mr. Carry, another of many experts in the process, as well as Mr. Pope and Professor Cross, emphasized that although the first lamps produced by Göbel were no longer operational at the time of the process, they were constructed in such a way that they would certainly have been practically very useful lamps in their manufacture. …“

.

As already stated, there was not ONE trial at which GÖBEL PARTEI was.

Mr. Carry’s announcement, „lamps that are certainly practically usable…“ is nonsense. Who wants to discuss the extensibility of „useful“ when it is only a matter of the GOEBEL PRIORITY REQUEST, which is concerned with the mimic of the EDISON lamp of September 5, 1879 and the patent granted on it.

.

„The technical performance of the Göbel lamp at the time of its manufacture, i.e. in the 1950s, can only be measured when one considers all the difficulties that still stood in the way of the production of such technical things in those years, difficulties that Edison had not even fully overcome up to 1856. Edison himself expressly emphasised that all lamps manufactured in France at that time had completely failed technically and economically, that the same difficulties had also been encountered in Germany, and that there too the manufacture of lamps had initially been a complete failure from an economic point of view. As the expert Record further reported, all the first lamps manufactured according to the Edison patent were in fact of little value, and Professor Rauland said about the first Edison lamps that if such lamps could really succeed in being cheap and durable enough, there would have to be an extraordinary amount of improvement before such incandescent light could attain any practical significance. …“

.

Beckmann does not argue above about the“… first electric incandescent lamp“ in connection with Göbel, but generally downgraded Edison and an extreme erroneous prognosis for the then „exploding“ revolution by the electric high-resistance vacuum incandescent lamps with low power consumption Edison began.

.

„Probably the happiest grip on the Göbel lamp was the fact that the inventor recognized the advantages of bamboo fiber and that he succeeded with tremendous skill in splitting off such a fine fiber with the help of the simplest scrapers and cutters. The fact that Göbel uses such a high vacuum was undoubtedly of the utmost importance, because the question of whether or not a strong vacuum was appropriate for the carbon filament lamp was very controversial at the time; even two years after filing his main patent, Edison took another patent in which he pointed to the observation that too high a vacuum could be harmful to the life of the carbon filament. One of the experts also pointed out that the second oldest goebel lamp, which, as noted, is currently available in the market. of the process was no longer operable, showed a strong black coating, and that, as Edison stated, the strength of the coating depended on the height of the vacuum and the luminous intensity of the lamps, so that this blackening was the best proof that the lamp had burned for a long time with strong light and a good vacuum. …“

.

Here, too, pure speculation is presented as a fact. The fact that a lamp was on by no means shows when it was on. In addition, black vouchers in Edison products depend on different conditions than in tubes in which coal experiments have taken place without the presence of a vacuum at all.

.

Some dents of the Tube-Ex. 1, 2 and 3 do not show vacuum, but clumsy glass work; because a heated glass tube, after the inner application has been positioned and fixed, is held with pliers, while it is simultaneously evacuated and sealed; the supply wires must be precisely placed and insulated, which can lead to concave dents above the atmospheric air pressure. Under no circumstances can black coatings be produced if no vacuum can be maintained for copper or iron feed wires. The lamp must at best be completely glowed for a short time. at least not have got black coating due to high burning time.

.

„While now the judges in the trial of first and second instance came to the conclusion that the opposition against the Edison patent had to be rejected because it was not sufficiently proven that the Goebel lamp, as it was at that time, would already have met practical requirements, the friends of Göbel had in the meantime hastily collected further material, so that, when a few weeks later the third trial took place with another enormous apparatus of experts and witnesses, the picture had shifted quite substantially further in Göbel’s favour. In this third instance, the court therefore came to the explicit conclusion, in contrast to the earlier ones, „that the many findings and investigations had proved that the Göbel lamp had been a really useful light source, that is to say thatThere was no trial in three instances. Beckmann adopted misunderstood ideas or came up with them himself, at least it is not clear which of the three real trials in 1893 that Edison or General Electric Co. filed in three lawsuits against three different patent infringers on immediate (temporary injunction) injunction.

Furthermore, the logic of the decision lies in the fact that the plaintiff must prove with the title of his patent judgment that the defendant infringes the patent. And the defendant only comes out of it if he does not violate the priority rights. Conversely, if the defendant presents arguments or evidence that are EX PARTE in themselves, namely here, where it was said „Göbel had already worked at Beacon in Boston for 20 Göbel had already had a practically usable light bulb in use 20 or 30 years before Edison and had shown it publicly. …“

.

There was no trial in three instances. Beckmann adopted misunderstood ideas or came up with them himself, at least it is not clear which of the three real trials in 1893 that Edison or General Electric Co. filed in three lawsuits against three different patent infringers on immediate (temporary injunction) injunction.

Furthermore, the logic of the decision lies in the fact that the plaintiff must prove with the title of his patent judgment that the defendant infringes the patent. And the defendant only comes out of it if he does not violate the priority rights. Conversely, if the defendant presents arguments or evidence that are EX PARTE in themselves, namely here, where it was said „Göbel had already worked at Beacon in Boston for 20 years“ or, „Gobel had already produced the edition patent qualities long before Edison. It is then up to the defendant to prove his arguments. And this is followed up by the judgment that „it is not enough to raise doubts or not to be able to exclude improbabilities“.

BECKMANN’s legal understanding is not sufficient here.

.

„But let us not forget to report that in this process of trying to explore everything in detail, Göbel’s numerous friends repeatedly confirmed that Göbel was always a man of great simplicity of character and complete reliability of character, who enjoyed the greatest trust among all his acquaintances…“

.

The opposite was the case. Heinrich Göbel was a ruthless rascal, with documented criminal and violent attitudes (the few hard documents from 1881 and 1882 show these individual characteristics. It is hardly an embarrassing explanation to think when the failures of the son Henry Junior as a witness in 1893, in these court proceedings, against the old father, in turn in affidavits – first on the defendant’s side, then after page change on the part of the plaintiff.

.

„Although Göbel, who had acquired a small property near New York, still enjoyed great physical freshness in old age, he died of pneumonia in New York on 16th XIIth 1893, shortly after the trial came to such a satisfying result for Göbel. …“

.

In his age he lived near 8th Avenue, the middle East Side in a dormitory of the German Pilgrim Lodge, where he died. No country house or pension scheme.

Göbel was not himself a party in a trial about lamp patents.

ButGöbel has not won in any sense, either in his own priority proclamations or in the narrow sense of family history. For through this „Goebel-defense“ an extensive collection of biographical documents emerged, in which the „Goebel-Defense“ forms the target system from Henry Goebel / Heinrich Göbel’s point of view.

This means that Göbel was a fraud and a poison dwarf, can still read every participant who looks at such papers.

That Göbel in 1881 and 1882 had tried to fraudulently infiltrate EDISON-PATENTS, Perkins, Geisler and others and finally in his name absurd hobby tubes were brought before the judges, became possible only by this event in 1893. This could hardly have been the aim of the old goat himself. It is easy to see how senselessly the seven affidavits of Henry Goebel contradict each other, just as they do not go together with Pope’s EE text nor with Vander Weyde’s testimonies.

Beckmann could not know all these facts – so that here remains only to accept this Beckmann text in the ETZ issue 47/48, page 1031-1034, of 29 November 1923, not as a serious testimony.

.

„The German inventor Heinrich Göbel deserves to be named first among the pioneers of electrical engineering, even if he was not granted the opportunity to lead his invention to the glittering external success that Edison had 20 years later, thanks to the higher level of electrical engineering. For Göbel’s lamp was probably finished, as he himself said at one point in the process; but time was not yet ready to use this invention“.